Boo!
H/T jack and jill politics
Alabama's a$$e$ of evil were all over the news yesterday, from Governor Robert Bentley, State Senator Scott Beason and of course Congressman Mo Brooks.
You can read the sad, sorry tale for yourself, but I want to concentrate on Governor Robert Bentley unholy actions. I was willing to give the good Governor a chance because I had it on good authority he was a nice guy just a member of the wrong party. He may be a good guy but his actions are WRONG.
Governor Bentley, cut education, laid off teachers and support personell, cut funding to states parks and other services but still collects taxes to pay to keep the grass cut at the CONFEDERATE MEMORIAL!
Despite fire-and-brimstone opposition to taxes among many in a state that still has "Heart of Dixie" on its license plates, officials never stopped collecting a property tax that once funded the Alabama Confederate Soldiers' Home, which closed 72 years ago. The tax now pays for Confederate Memorial Park, which sits on the same 102-acre tract where elderly veterans used to stroll.
The tax once brought in millions for Confederate pensions, but lawmakers sliced up the levy and sent money elsewhere as the men and their wives died. No one has seriously challenged the continued use of the money for a memorial to the "Lost Cause," in part because few realize it exists; one long-serving black legislator who thought the tax had been done away with said he wants to eliminate state funding for the park.
We can thank our great snark Alabama Constitution for taxing treason.
Alabama's tax structure was enshrined in its 1901 Constitution, passed after Reconstruction at a time when historians say state legislators' main goal was to keep power in the hands of wealthy white landowners by disenfranchising blacks and poor whites.
The Constitution allowed a state property tax of up to 6.5 mills, which now amounts to $39 annually on a home worth $100,000. Of that tax, 3 mills went to schools; 2.5 mills went to the operating budget; and 1 mill went to pensions for Confederate veterans and widows.
The state used the pension tax to fund the veterans home once it assumed control of the operation in 1903. The last Confederate veteran living at the home died in 1934, and its hospital was converted into apartments for widows. It closed in 1939, and the five women who lived there were moved to Montgomery.
It's bad enough I am forced to buy a license plate that says Heart of Dixie, but I'm also paying for a Confederate Memorial Park? I don't want my #$%^ tax dollars paying for the license plate or the Confederate Memorial Park any more than republicans want their tax dollars to pay for abortions.
Legislators whittled away at the Confederate tax through the decades, and millions of dollars that once went to the home and pensions now go to fund veteran services, the state welfare agency and other needs. But the park still gets 1 percent of one mill, and its budget for this year came to $542,469, which includes money carried over from previous years plus certificates of deposit.
All that money has created a manicured, modern park that's the envy of other Alabama historic sites, which are funded primarily by grants, donations and friends groups. Legislators created the park in 1964 during a period that marked both the 100th anniversary of the Civil War and the height of the civil rights movement in the Deep South.
Nothing is left of the veterans' home but a few foundations and two cemeteries with 313 graves, but a museum with Civil War artifacts and modern displays opened at the park in 2007. Rebel flags fly all around the historic site, which Rambo said draws more than 10,000 visitors annually despite being hidden in the country nine miles and three turns off Interstate 65 in the central part of the state.
While the park flourishes quietly, other historic attractions around the state are fighting for survival.
No, while education and other public services suffer the Confederate part flourishes. How is that for getting your priorities right (pun intended).
Workers at Helen Keller's privately run home in northwest Alabama fear losing letters written by the famed activist because of a lack of state funding for preservation of artifacts. On the Gulf Coast at Dauphin Island, preservationists say the state-owned Fort Gaines is in danger of being undermined by waves after nearly 160 years standing guard at the entry to Mobile Bay.
Isn't it ironic they are always telling black folks to get over slavery and stop reliving the past then tax us so they can relive the past? Hell, we might as well elected Artur Davis as Governor.
Big Snark
5 comments:
Reading this Alternet summary on voter intimidation (http://www.alternet.org/news/151687/11_states_trying_really_hard_to_keep_poor%2C_black%2C_and_student_voters_from_voting), I wonder how much of this insanity is related. The anti-immigrant law goes into effect before the voter ID one does; and if there is interference during the next election, we will know for sure. I'm so glad I have 1960's experience with voter registration drives -- I may need it again.
Now we know what the righty's mean when they say they want to take THEIR country back. They want to go BACK to the days black and brown people couldn't vote and it was illegal for blacks to learn to read and write. They want to go back to before the Civil War.
"Alabama's tax structure was enshrined in its 1901 Constitution, passed after Reconstruction at a time when historians say state legislators' main goal was to keep power in the hands of wealthy white landowners by disenfranchising blacks and poor whites."
And until this constitution is done away with and rewritten for modern times, Alabama's legislative problems won't be solved.
Unfortunately, Alabamians seem to have so little trust in their politicians that they can't even trust them to rewrite the state constitution without adding a bunch of bullshit for special interests and other scratch-my-back under-the-table bullshit.
"Isn't it ironic they are always telling black folks to get over slavery and stop reliving the past then tax us so they can relive the past? Hell, we might as well elected Artur Davis as Governor."
Indeed. They want it to go back to "the way it was". You can't go "home" again, guys.
"Now we know what the righty's mean when they say they want to take THEIR country back. They want to go BACK to the days black and brown people couldn't vote and it was illegal for blacks to learn to read and write. They want to go back to before the Civil War."
What strikes me about this longing to go back to the 1840s and 1850s is that the bulk of these people would have been, back in those times, NOT the strapping, iced-tea sipping plantation owners or businessmen that held vast amounts of property, including slaves (who were legally considered property). Instead, they'll end up the poor, downtrodden white farmer who may have owned a grand total of ONE slave, if they were lucky.
In other words, these guys imagine themselves as kings, when in reality they'd end up serfs and peasants.
http://www.morningstartv.com/oak-initiative/marxism-america
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